Province risking health of migrant workers, says group
Working ‘clusters’ of infected employees rejected by public health for local farm outbreak
A migrant workers rights group has blasted a plan by the provincial government to allow international agricultural labourers to keep working even if they test positive for COVID-19.
In a Wednesday news release, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change said it was “horrified and enraged” by part of the Ontario’s government plan to combat the novel coronavirus on farms that will allow asymptomatic workers with the virus to continue to work in “clusters” of infected employees separated from the rest of the workforce.
“Migrant Workers Alliance for Change calls for an immediate reversal of this decision, and stop-work orders to be issued in places with positive cases while guaranteeing full income for workers on the farms which are closed or have infections through 21 paid sick days,” said the advocacy group’s release. “The federal government must stop the province from proceeding with this directive that jeopardizes public health.”
Allowing infected workers to stay on the job provided they are isolated from everyone else on a farm was part of Premier Doug Ford’s plan, announced Wednesday, to combat the spread of the potentially lethal virus, which has sickened hundreds of migrant farmhands in Ontario, particularly in the Windsor-Essex region, where there are more than 300 active cases.
In Niagara, at least 65 employees of Pioneer Flower Farms have become infected.
In almost all cases, the workers did not bring the virus with them to the farms, but contracted it while in the community in which they work.
Ford also announced the province, co-ordinating with public health units, will send mobile COVID-19 testing units to farms to test workers.
Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, Dr. Mustafa Hirji, said his department has done some mobile testing at the Pioneer farm, but has not been informed as to the details of the provincial government’s plan to test thousands of workers on hundreds of farms in Ontario.
Hirji said there has been some reluctance on the part of workers to leave the farm to get tested out of fear a positive test would mean the loss of their job, or even deportation.
During his Wednesday news conference, Ford assured migrant workers they would not be fired if they became sick and they would be eligible for provincial unemployment benefits. The trepidation about offsite testing also extended to farm operators, who are worried about further exposure of their workers.
“In some cases, they had an assessment centre set up for workers to go to, but the concern was having workers from multiple farms congregating together for tests, and how safe is that for the workers and for the farms?” said Keith Currie, president of Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
Ford lashed out at individuals who have launched racist diatribes against the workers after the farm outbreaks.
“If you don’t appreciate a migrant worker, then you go out in the fields and work your back off when it is 100 degrees in the middle of the summer,” he said. “If you see a migrant worker, as a matter of fact, maybe you should say ‘Thank you for working your back off,’ because a lot of people aren’t willing to do the work they do.”
Ford said farms are entirely dependant on seasonal cycles and need workers immediately, which is in part why the government is allowing infected workers to continue to work as “clusters” of asymptomatic, COVID-19-positive employees.
Hirji said while the idea of clusters can work, and public health did consider it an option for Pioneer, his department ultimately abandoned the idea.
The problem, Hirji said, is workers who said they had no COVID-19 symptoms were exhibiting signs of the viral infection, albeit very mildly. He said some people can have symptoms that are so minor a person dismisses them. It is only after a public health investigation it is learned that person did briefly have symptoms, and was therefore capable of spreading the virus.
Currie said clusters are a way for farms to continue agricultural production, particularly at key seasonal moments when crops have to be planted or harvested. He said the move is just one of several steps the industry has to take.
“There are some issues, including housing, where it’s been made clear because of the pandemic we have to do a better job to protect our workers, and their safety has to be the No. 1 concern,” said Currie.
The worker’s alliance, meanwhile, said the provincial plan is effectively forcing sick labourers to continue working, placing them and others at increased risk.
“(Ford) is prioritizing profit and big business interests over migrants’ ability to protect themselves from illness and death,” Kit Andres, for the Niagara branch of the Migrant Workers Alliance, said in statement. “We call on Ontario to reverse the decision and on the federal government to give workers the power to protect themselves by giving permanent resident status to all migrants now.”